The king was asking for wedding gifts when Perseus made his promise.
All around him, men were offering horses. They named their finest mares, their swiftest stallions, and Polydectes received each pledge with a nod. Beyond the open doors of the hall, the evening sea shone between the roofs of Seriphos.
Perseus had no horse.
He had come because the king had summoned him, and because Polydectes now claimed to be seeking the hand of Hippodamia, a princess far away. If that were true, perhaps he would leave Danae alone. Perhaps Perseus would no longer have to stand beside his mother whenever the king approached her.
“And you?” Polydectes asked.
Perseus felt the waiting faces turn toward him.
“Ask for something I can bring.”
“What would that be?”
“Whatever you wish. Even the Gorgon’s head.”
He heard his own words settle into the silence.
Polydectes leaned forward. “Then bring me that.”
A man beside Perseus lowered his cup. Nobody laughed.
“Medusa’s head,” the king said. “You have promised it before witnesses.”
Perseus looked at the doors, at the narrow strip of sea. He had meant to offer more than the wealthy men around him. Now they were going home to their horses, and he was going to a creature whose very face could turn a man to stone.
The king sat back. He had asked for no wedding date.
The Shared Eye
Perseus left Seriphos with the sound of that promise still in his ears.
He did not find the way alone. Hermes came to guide him, and Athena, whose gaze remained steady when Perseus spoke Medusa’s name. They led him toward the country of the Graeae, three sisters who had been old since birth.
“The nymphs have what you need,” Hermes told him. “These sisters know where to find them.”
The Graeae sat close together among bare rocks. Their pale heads inclined toward every sound. Between them they possessed one eye and one tooth, passing them from sister to sister so that each might have her turn.
Perseus stopped beyond their reach.
“I am looking for the nymphs.”
The sister who held the eye examined him. Her mouth tightened.
“Then look.”
The other two made a dry, small sound of pleasure.
“Tell me the way.”
“Tell us why.”
He hesitated. There was no kindness in the face watching him, and these women were sisters to the Gorgons. He could not expect them to help him toward Medusa.
Beside the seeing sister, a hand opened impatiently.
“My turn.”
The eye came free. The tooth followed. For a moment both lay between two waiting hands.
Perseus stepped in and caught them.
The receiving hand closed on nothing.
“Give it here.”
“I have given it.”
Their fingers searched one another’s palms. Then three faces turned toward the scrape of Perseus’s sandal.
“You.”
He drew back as their arms swept the air.
“Show me the way to the nymphs.”
One sister reached so close that her nails brushed his sleeve. He moved again, holding the strange small things tightly enough not to drop them.
“Our eye,” she said.
“And your tooth. You shall have both.”
The sisters fell silent. Without the eye they could not follow him; without their answer he could go no farther. He waited while they listened for his breathing.
At last one spoke. She gave him the way, slowly, stopping between each part as though she could still keep the last turn of the path to herself. Perseus made her finish. Then he laid the tooth and eye in her outstretched hand.
By the time she could see him, he was already leaving.
Gifts for the Journey
The nymphs brought out a pair of winged sandals, a bag with a strap, and a dark cap.
Perseus knelt to fasten the sandals. Their wings stirred against his ankles. When he rose, his feet lifted from the ground, and he caught at the nearest rock before remembering that the sandals were meant to carry him.
One of the nymphs held out the bag.
“For what you have been sent to fetch.”
He passed its strap over his shoulder. The empty bag rested against his side. He tried not to imagine it full.
Then he put on the cap.
Nothing changed. He could still see the nymph before him, the rock beneath his hand, the folds of his own clothing. But her eyes no longer followed his face.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Here.”
Her gaze moved toward his voice.
It was the cap of Hades. While he wore it, others could not see him.
Hermes gave him a sickle of adamant, its curved edge pale and hard. Perseus balanced it in his hand. It was shorter than a sword; he would have to stand close.
Athena brought his attention to the polished bronze of a shield. His own face looked back at him from it, small and troubled.
“Keep your eyes here,” she said.
“In the shield?”
“When you stand above her.”
He turned it. The rocks moved across the bronze, and his hand seemed to reach the wrong way.
“Medusa is mortal,” Athena told him. “Her sisters are not. Do not try to fight them.”
Perseus slipped the cap down securely, took the shield and sickle, and rose into the air.
The earth fell away. Fields dwindled; mountains passed beneath his feet. At last the water of Ocean stretched below him, darkening toward the edge of the world.
The Bronze Shield
He found the three Gorgons asleep.
Athena was beside him as he descended. Before he could lift his head toward the shapes on the rock, she touched his arm. He fixed his gaze on the shield.
At first he could make out only folds of darkness and a dull gleam. He tilted the bronze. A wing took shape, gold feathers layered against stone. Beyond it lay a hand that shone like metal.
Then a face slid into the reflection.
Perseus stopped breathing.
Serpents coiled about the head. A tusk showed beside the sleeping mouth. One snake lifted itself and settled again, slowly, as though the air were too heavy to bear it up.
His eyes wanted to leave the shield. The reflection was small; he wanted to know exactly how far away she lay. His neck had already begun to turn when Athena’s fingers tightened on his arm.
He stared into the bronze until the urge passed.
The cap hid him from the Gorgons. It would not save him from seeing them.
Athena indicated the sleeping figure he must approach.
Medusa.
Her two sisters lay close by, their golden wings folded. He could hear them breathing now. The sound reached him plainly, though he saw them only in the dim, shifting world of the shield.
Perseus moved one foot. In the bronze, the ground seemed to slide beneath him. He stopped, found Medusa again, and moved the other.
The bag pressed against his hip. He eased its mouth open.
A serpent stirred.
He stood still so long that his shoulder began to ache beneath the shield. Nothing else moved. Medusa slept on.
He thought of the king’s hall: the cups, the horses promised so easily, the sudden silence after his boast. Here there was no one to hear another promise. There was only the sleeping face in the bronze and the distance his blade had yet to cross.
Athena laid her hand over his wrist.
He let her guide it.
The sickle rose. Perseus kept his eyes upon the reflection and struck.
Medusa’s head was severed with that single blow.
Before he could draw breath, wings burst into the reflected sky. A horse sprang forth where Medusa had fallen, unfolding great pinions; beside it appeared a figure carrying a golden blade. Pegasus and Chrysaor had come out of their mother at the moment of her death.
The horse’s first wingbeat swept dust across the bronze.
Perseus caught the head without turning toward it, lowered it into the bag and pulled the mouth shut.
A cry broke behind him.
One of the other Gorgons had woken.
He rose from the ground as a second cry answered the first. Golden wings opened in the shield. He saw the sisters bend toward the place where Medusa lay; then their faces lifted, searching.
Perseus swung the shield away before either image could draw his gaze beyond its rim.
The sandals carried him out over the water.
Behind him came the thunder of wings.
He bent forward, the bag striking his side with every movement. Air tore at his clothes. He held the cap with one hand and the closed bag with the other, while the Gorgons swept through the space where they thought he must be.
A shadow crossed the water below him.
He did not look back.
Their cries followed him across Ocean, fierce and bereft. Even when the beating wings had fallen far behind, he could still hear the sisters calling through the air.
Only when he was certain they were gone did he take off the cap.
The Gift Delivered
When Perseus at last came back to Seriphos, he found neither Danae nor Dictys at home.
Dictys had raised him. Long ago, when the sea had carried Danae and her infant son to the island in a wooden chest, it was Dictys who had taken him in. Now his doorway stood empty.
Perseus found them at the altars.
His mother was sitting close to the sacred stone. Dictys stood beside her. At the sound of footsteps he turned sharply, putting himself between Danae and the approaching man.
Then he recognized him.
“Perseus.”
Danae rose. She gripped her son’s arms, looking into his face as though she needed to be certain that he was more than a shape made by longing.
He touched her hands. “Why are you here?”
“Polydectes,” Dictys said.
Perseus looked from the old man to his mother. The king had not left her alone. While Perseus crossed the world to bring him a gift, Danae and Dictys had been driven to seek the protection of the altars.
He lowered his eyes to the bag.
“Stay here.”
His mother caught his wrist.
He waited until she looked at him.
“I will come back,” he said.
Then he went to the palace.
Polydectes had gathered his friends. Their voices carried through the doorway, familiar after the long silence of the journey. Perseus stepped into the hall and stood where he had stood before.
The king stared at him.
“You sent me for Medusa’s head,” Perseus said.
He lifted the bag by its strap.
A chair scraped. Somewhere a cup was set down too hard.
“Here is your gift.”
Perseus turned his face away and drew out the head.
The scrape of the chair stopped.
No one spoke. No one moved toward him.
He stood with his arm outstretched until the silence had become complete. Then, still looking away, he lowered the head into the bag and closed it.
Polydectes sat rigid upon his chair. Stone folds lay across stone knees. Around him his companions remained as they had been caught: one rising, one reaching, one with his mouth still open. The hall that had listened to Perseus’s promise could hear nothing now.
He walked out through the doors.
The kingdom passed to Dictys. The head Perseus gave to Athena. She set it upon her shield, and carried away the face he had crossed the world to find.
When Hermes came for the borrowed gifts, Perseus unfastened the winged sandals and surrendered them with the cap and the empty bag. Hermes would return them to the nymphs.
Perseus went back to the altars on his own two feet.
Danae was waiting. This time, when he held out his hand, she stepped down from the sacred stone and came with him.